American Nazi Party

The American Nazi Party (ANP), originally known as the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), is a national socialist political party in the United States that was founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell. The party embraced Nazi iconography and uniforms at first, but Rockwell later toned down its verbal and written attacks against non-whites and replaced its slogan "Sieg Heil!" with "White Power!". Rockwell took his organization seriously and sought to tone down its extreme views in order to enable the ANP to compete in elections, but hardliners such as Matt Koehl opposed any dilution of the original Nazi views, and Rockwell was murdered in 1967 by a disgruntled follower. Koehl, a staunch Hitlerist, took over the party and retained the pseudo-Nazi uniforms of the "stormtroopers" and the Nazi literature. The organization broke up in the following years, but several smaller groups continued to use the party name into the 21st century. David Duke, the future Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, was an ANP member until 1975, when he became a Southern Democrat.